ally forced to leave his precious books for bed, he would repeat
the information he had learned, or the lessons for the next day to his
brother, who usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before the
conversation was half completed."

"Ah!" said Zaccheus Greeley, Horace's father, when the boy one day, in
a fit of abstraction, tried to yoke the "off" ox on the "near" side:
"Ah! that boy will never know enough to get on in the world. He'll
never know more than enough to come in when it rains!"

Yet this boy knew so much that when at fourteen he secured a place as
printer in a newspaper office at East Poultney, Vermont, he was looked
up to by his fellow-printers as equal in learning to the editor himself.

At first they tried to make merry at his expense, poking fun at his
odd-looking garments, his uncouth appearance, and his pale, delicate
face and almost white hair, which subsequently won for him the nickname
of "Ghost." But when they saw that Horace was too good humored and too
much in earnest with his work to be disturbed by their teasing, they
gave it up. In a short time he became a general favorite, not only in
the office, but in the town of Poultney, whose debating and literary
societies soon recognized him as leader. Even the minister, the lawyer,
and the school-teachers looked up to the poor, retiring young printer,
who was a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge, ready at all times to
speak or to write an essay on any subject.

But the Poultney newspaper was obliged to suspend soon after Horace had
learned his trade, and, penniless,--for every cent of his earnings
beyond what furnished the bare necessaries of life had been sent home
to his parents in the wilderness,--he faced the world once more.

After working in different small towns wherever he could get a "job,"
reading, studying, enlarging his knowledge all the time when not in the
office, he made up his mind to go to New York, "to be somebody," as he
put it.

When he stepped off the towboat at Whitehall, near the Battery, that
sunny morning in August, 1831, with only the experience of a score of
years in life, a stout heart, quick brain, nimble fingers, and an
abiding faith in God as his capital, his prospects certainly were not
very alluring.

"An overgrown, awkward, white-headed, forlorn-looking boy; a pack
suspended on a staff over his right shoulder; his dress unrivaled in
sylvan simplicity since the primitive fig leaves of Eden; the
expression of